


This Is The House

by prince0froses



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-12
Updated: 2012-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-04 05:42:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prince0froses/pseuds/prince0froses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arkham Asylum through the eyes of a ghostly child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is The House

**Author's Note:**

> Fic inspired by Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth and the character of Harriet Arkham. Includes light references to animated canon and the pre-reboot burning and reconstruction of Arkham at the end.

As far as Harriet was concerned, it was the most beautiful house in all the world.

She felt that way already when Father had moved them there from Metropolis, the first time she'd seen the place's spires reaching up into the clouds like fingers on a dead hand. But it beat true in her little heart surer than ever after the terrible night the mad dog broke in. Harriet remembered watching from inside the doll-house as her father held her, hearing him promise in broken whispers that he would build it bigger, better, so that nothing would hurt her again. She asked him softly, the fear that had ruled this night suddenly gone from her, where she was.

Father laughed, then, the blood on his teeth gone pink in the lamplight. "Why, my dear, you're in Wonderland. The mad dog has chased us all down the rabbit hole together."

Harriet's soft brow furrowed; after all, to her it looked like the nursery. But Father was never wrong, and in the months that followed, she watched the bricks and mortar swell as if on their own, a frenzied pace of growth sweeping over the grounds. Everything looked different some days: one morning she awoke to find that the lawn she had played on every day was a river. The next morning, it was as it always was. Another day, she could see the city's proud buttressed towers rising around them; the next they were back in the country beyond its limits. Harried asked Father why; he did not hear her. She minded little, though; true to his word, the house had indeed become Wonderland.

In one room, there were always fireworks, just for her Father had said. In another, men in white coats fussed over vials and powders in pretty colors; to Harriet it seemed they were making candy. She never got to try any of it, though. Mother had always taught her to share, so Harriet contented herself knowing the candy went to her imaginary friends. And ooh, that was the best part. Father made room after room, tiny little rooms, cubbyholes with clear glass fronts, for keeping her imaginary friends in. There were so many, and all so funny! They would babble and jammer about the oddest things, stringing together words like ill-made necklaces for her to wear around the grounds. Even the quiet ones amused her; she would watch as they went to the fireworks room and came back all twitchy.

When she tired of her imaginary friends, Harriet liked best following Father as he went among them, keeping close to his coat-tails so she would not lose him amongst Wonderland's kaleidoscopic pathways. One of the cubbyholes did not have a shiny glass front, but a tall, steel door, with a tiny window far above her reach, the first of many similar. Father knelt in front of her before he went into that door; he did nearly every day. He looked right in her eyes and whispered "This one is not for you, my dear. Please, do not enter." As the metal slab creaked open, Harriet thought she heard the howl of the mad dog behind it, and so fled down the hall.

Not long after, idling in the fireworks room as she often did, Father came in, followed by men who were holding...no. The mad dog, in chains! His face wasn't the snarling, gruesome visage she remembered; there was something snide in his muzzle as the men strapped him to the table. Tears came to her eyes and she screamed, but Father silenced her with a look. His tired, bright eyes told her there was nothing to fear this time. When Father pulled down the switch, the grim, mad smile on his face, she put her little hand over his and smiled back.

People came and went very quickly after that day, and Harriet paid them little heed. With the mad dog vanquished forever, she let her hours slip away with play. Father came to live with her friends; he had gone gaunt, eyes deep-sunken and purple. She ran to him, tried to embrace him, but found she couldn't pass within a foot of him, as if he had built a wall around himself she couldn't see. Harriet looked on as he scratched spiraled symbols into the floorboards, until the words drove her from the room, and she could not re-enter at all.

People came and went so quickly. Her imaginary friends grew sickly, some walked out the doors and into the city beyond, and Harriet never saw them again. Strangers took turns sitting in Father's chair: Dr. Burton, Dr. Bartholomew, until one day, to her delight, she saw her baby cousin Jeremiah there. Eventually, Father left his room, looking hale and young again, but he never spoke to her. He doted on Jeremiah, whispering to his heir late into the night.

This betrayal should have stung, she knew, but something much, much more exciting than Father crept upon the place, dark shadows of ancient rooms suffering explosions of color. Her old, boring imaginary friends replaced themselves with toys better than Harriet could ever have imagined. It began with the clown. Harriet remembered clowns, images of a circus long turned to dust danced in her mind. He didn't babble, he laughed! He laughed and laughed, and his first night asleep in his cubbyhole, Harriet tiptoed up to him and stroked his white cheek. Father had said at the circus that clowns laugh because they cannot cry. She wondered, appraising his wrinkled violet suit and his shock of fright-green hair, what happened to make him want to cry.

Harriet adored presents, so she was enamored when the next friend came to her with flowers. The woman, statuesque with vines falling from her shoulders, reminded Harriet of Mother, so she often sat by the plant lady's side as she sang to the roots she dug, urging them to grow. She fell asleep often here, soothed by venomous lullabies.

When they brought in another man, with half a face and wild eyes, Harriet feared him at first, tiptoeing past his home to play some more with the clown. Once, though, she caught what face he had in a shock of moonlight, a tear in his eye. Harriet recalled a fairy tale her mother used to tell, of a prince trapped in the form of a beast, and she wondered if a kiss would change him back. The half-man paid no heed to her cold lips on his hand, but ever after she looked in on him with broken love.

There were even more, and each more delightful than the last, but the clown was the first, and always her favorite, no matter the trouble he got into. Even when he tried to kill her other friends, which he did more often than not, Harriet could not bring herself to scold him for playing rough. She forgave each time, as soon as she wandered into him playing at cards, and saw that he had dealt her a hand. When a beautiful blonde princess came to the house, Harriet urged her towards the clown prince. Sometimes they grew apart, but never long: Harriet loved a happy ending. Though, she had to concede, the plant Mother was good to her too, in her fashion.

The only trace of sadness in Harriet's world were the stretches of time her friends spent out there, in the city. It was not good for them, she reasoned; so far away from her, where they could not have their candy, they could not play. Though Father hid and shrieked to bring the house down every time he swept in on leathery wings, Harriet loved the Bat, even more than her clown, her plant mother, her half man combined. Perhaps even more than Father. The Bat, though he tread a wake of grief through the river, always brought her toys home to her; in fact, she learned that he was where they came from. Father built her a doll house, yes, but the Bat ensured it was never empty.

Even as shingle and steel alike burned to ash as Harriet dashed across the grounds, playing tag beneath collapsing beams, her friends scrambling into the night, she could only laugh and gaze in awe as the flames lapped defiantly against the moon. Father would make Jeremiah bring it back, of course he would.

After all, Arkham was the most beautiful house in all the world.


End file.
